Friday, July 10, 2009

Mall shopping called child neglect

Two years ago in June, Bridget Kevane, a professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Montana State University, drove her three kids and two of their friends — two 12-year-old girls, and three younger kids, age 8, 7 and 3 — to a mall near their home in Bozeman. She put the 12-year-olds in charge, and told them not to leave the younger kids alone. She ordered that the 3-year-old remain in her stroller. She told them to call her on their cell phone if they needed her.

And then she drove home for some rest.

About an hour later, she was summoned back to the mall by the police, who charged her with endangering the welfare of her children. ...

The children were fine — “smiling, eating candy” — or were, at least, until the police decided to make an example of their mom. ...

(Paradox of paradoxes, as part of her deferred prosecution agreement, she was sentenced to even more education: in the form of a parenting class.)

The hatred of women — in all its archaic, phantasmagoric forms — is still alive and well in our society, and when directed at well-educated women, it’s socially acceptable, too.

Our society has a socially acceptable hatred of well-educated women? Is she nuts?

No, it is usually the lower class women who are the targets of these do-gooders. Just look at the story below about the mom who was arrested in her own home for being drunk.

And dads get it much worse than women. If you don't believe it, then drop in on your local parenting class. You won't find the educated and affluent women that Warner claims are being targeted. You'll find men who are trying to satisfy a never-ending list of requirements for them to see their own kids.

I have to wonder what Warner thinks happens to the 95% of people who don't occupy her socio-economic level. Does she honestly believe that if, instead of Kevane, the woman who left her kids at the mall had been poor, and black or hispanic, she'd have been treated better? What about a poor, white male? I can see arrests and the children placed in foster care while the parents fight, with money they don't have, to get them back. By any stretch of the imagination, Kevane got off lucky.

He particularly objects to Warner saying:

...our country’s resentment, and even hatred, of well-educated, apparently affluent women is spiraling out of control.